Marion
by americanstalker
Summary: Mike Keppler meets a woman that might just stop his running. Rated T for now, likely to change.
1. Chapter 1

Marion

_A woman comes into Mike Keppler's life that just might stop his running._

Mike Keppler was used to running from his past, hoping to leave it all behind. But no matter what, he never could. He went from Trenton to Philly to Baltimore to Las Vegas, and his past kept on cropping up. He was well-liked at work, but never got out other than that. The reason for this was due in part to physical and emotional exhaustion. Nightmares gave him difficulty sleeping, and he had to use what little energy he had for work. However, one day he met someone who would eventually stop his running.

He met her at a diner one morning, while having breakfast. They were both sitting at the counter. She sat down next to him, said hi, and then ordered a Diet Coke before looking over the menu. She looked young, like she was maybe twenty. She had boyishly short brown hair, blue eyes, and a thin build, and wearing a white t-shirt and black jeans with a Chicago Cubs hat.

"They make good omelets here", Marion commented while looking over the menu. The investigator nodded in response while enjoying his breakfast of eggs Benedict. She ordered one with cheese, tomatoes, and green peppers before replacing the menu. Mike gave her a disgusted look and said "Ew".

"Don't knock it until you've tried it. Oh, by the way, my name is Marion", she introduced herself, extending a hand.

"Mike", he replied, shaking it. She told him she was from Chicago, and moved here for a "change of scenery". She worked the graveyard shift at a nearby Safeway supermarket, and studied criminal justice online.

When her food came, they talked a little more. Mike asked her why she liked to work the graveyard shift.

"I do my best work at night. Besides, it's nice and quiet at the store, so I can get plenty done," Marion explained. "What about you? Do you work nights?"

"For now, yes. I just got here from Baltimore, and I'm taking over for the night shift while their supervisor is away. I'm going to switch to days when he comes back. Oh, I work for the Las Vegas Crime Lab."

"Cool, I kind of hope to work there once I get my degree. Heaven knows I'm sick and tired of working at Safeway."

"What do you do there, exactly?" He asked.

"I work in the produce section," Marion replied while she took a bite of her omelet. "So you're from Baltimore?"

"No, Trenton. I've been all over the Eastern Seaboard. I'm glad to be away from there." Mike told his new friend.

This made Marion curious. She then asked him where he was before. He told her that he had also lived in Philadelphia between Trenton and Baltimore.

"Well, a word of warning, in any event. The pizza here is horrible."

"How would you know about good pizza?"

"Hey, I'm from Chicago, and I'd like to think I know something about good pizza and good hot dogs." She then told him about a few hot dog places in the town, and how they most definitely were nothing compared to the ones in Chicago.

"They don't put dill pickles on them or seasoning salt. They also put ketchup on them. That is just total –"

"Sacrilege? I know, that is something you don't do even in the Tri-State area. It's one thing if you put it on a little kid's hot dog, but otherwise, it's just plain wrong".

At last, about an hour later, Marion told Mike that she had to go home to do her homework and get some sleep and got up to pay. Before that, they exchanged phone numbers and other contact information, and promised to talk again soon.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Marion gave him a call after she got off work. She invited him over when he got off shift, so they could just hang out together.

"All right, I'll go home, change, and I'll call you when I'm on my way over. Can I have your address?"

She gave him her address, and told him she looked forward to seeing him soon.

Half an hour later, Marion heard a knock on her door. She looked through the peephole to discover it was Mike. She let him in and he sat down on her couch.

"Would you like something to drink? I have some bottled water, Diet Coke, and coffee."

"Water sounds good, thanks."

Marion walked back into the living room with two bottles of Nestle Pure Life water in her hands. She gave one to Mike, and sat back down on the couch. They talked about their workdays, and Mike asked Marion about school.

"It's all right. Statistics is torture for me, but I think I'll live," she admitted to her new friend. She also told him that she found the criminal justice classes to be exciting, and couldn't wait to take more.

"Not friends with math?"

"Math is my mortal enemy. I'm glad that I only have one stats class after this. Then we get into the meat of it."

Mike nodded in acknowledgement, and said that if she needed help with statistics, he'd be more than happy to help. Marion then picked up the TV remote and started flipping through the channels to see if there was anything good on.

"Blast, nothing but morning talk shows," she complained before dropping it onto the coffee table with disgust.

"Oh well, you're more interesting than the TV anyway," she turned to her new friend.

He smiled at her as he laid his arm over the back of the couch. "Tell me a little more about yourself", Marion requested.

"What would you like to know?" he asked after taking a sip out of his bottle of water.

"Where you went to college, your family, all that good stuff."

Mike took a deep breath and screwed the cap back on. "Well, I don't have much of a family. My parents are dead and I'm an only child. I was married once, but she divorced me, and she died a few years later."

"I'm sorry."

Mike shook his head. "Don't worry about it. It's in the past, and I need to move on," he told Marion. "Now it's your turn."

"Well, I have three older brothers, both my parents are still alive, and all of them still live in Chicago. I also meant to tell you that I've been serving in the Army Reserve for the last seven years", she told him.

"Wow, thank you for your service. What's your job in the Army?"

"Human resource specialist."

"Have you ever been deployed?" He asked her.

"No, and I'm a little disappointed about that. My unit refuses to deploy me. Long story", she explained. Mike said that she didn't have to tell him.

Topics of conversation went all over the place, from sports teams, to music, movies, books, politics, what their favorite subjects in school were, and even which beers they preferred and why. Mike then looked at his watch, and noted that he needed to get some sleep.

"Yeah, I should do the same. It was great talking to you again. I hope to see you soon," Marion bade him farewell.

_I'd love for him to do that with me sometime, _she thought as she went to bed.

At the crime lab, his co-workers noticed a new spring in his step. They all wanted to know what was going on in his life that made him feel so much better.

"I made a new friend yesterday," their supervisor explained.

"Details, please," Hodges asked as they went over some evidence from a homicide the day before.

"Her name is Marion; she works the graveyard shift in the produce department at Safeway and is serving in the Army Reserve." Mike told him with a big smile.

"Methinks that it's going to turn into a little more than that soon. I can tell just by the smile on your face."

Mike looked a little perplexed. "Only time will tell. Like I said, I just met her yesterday. I'm happy that I made a friend here. That's all she is for now."

The lab tech smiled and then explained the results of a test he ran on some urine he found at the scene. It belonged to the killer, a male. It was run in CODIS, not hits. However, there were high levels of ketones, which meant that the killer was a diabetic.

"Great, now we just have to find a white male diabetic. Do you have anything else that can help us?"

"Archie might be able to help you. He's looking at the surveillance tapes right now," Hodges told Mike.

"Thanks." He then took off for the A/V room.

"Hey Catherine, Hodges, come over here," Nick called over when Mike was out of the room.

When they walked over, he explained that he was starting a pool as to when Keppler was going to bang his new "friend".

"Like he said, they're friends. I doubt he's going to have sex with her anytime soon," Catherine told him.

"Please, it's inevitable. They're going to have sex at some point. He's a guy, and guys like sex."

Hodges gave in. "All right, one month", he betted, giving him twenty dollars. Catherine wagered the same amount for two months.

He continued to go around the building, gathering wagers of two weeks (Archie and Brass), one week (Mandy), six weeks (Doc Robins), the next night (Greg and Henry), two months (Super Dave), one month (Bobby), and three weeks (Warrick and Sara).

"How will we know when Mike and Marion have done the deed?" Warrick asked.

"Trust me, we'll know," Nick assured his friends. With that, they went back to work.


	3. Chapter 3

A couple of weeks later, Marion came over to his place. He flipped channels until he found something they could agree on, which was an episode of _Law and Order_. Marion loved crime investigation shows, and she especially liked this episode, where a cabbie found a retired insurance broker murdered in the back of his cab. The man was not only stabbed, but shot as well. It was discovered that not only did he refuse to pay out some insurance for a family, but that he sold life insurance policies to Jewish families in Poland and Czechoslovakia in World War II, and then wouldn't pay out when the time came. He was also subpoenaed by the Italian government for what he did. _Don't write out checks that your ass can't cash,_ she thought while she was watching this.

Marion was lying down and snuggled up next to Mike with her arms around his waist and head upon his chest. He gently rubbed her back and kissed her forehead. His heartbeat and the sound of his breathing were like a lullaby, and she was soon asleep.

Mike woke up suddenly, sitting up straight, and started crying. Marion woke up too, fumbling for the bedside light.

"What's wrong? Did you have a bad dream?" She asked her friend, rubbing his back.

"I just had a horrible nightmare," he gasped for air.

Marion got up and gave him a glass of water. He gulped it down eagerly, while she held him and kissed his cheek.

"It's okay, it was only a dream. I'm right here, Mike, you're going to be fine," she assured him. When he finished, he handed the glass back to her so she could put it by the sink. He thanked her, and lied back down. Marion joined him. This time, Mike laid his head on her chest and wrapped his arms around her waist. Her breathing and her heartbeat calmed him down enough so he could go back to sleep. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed his forehead. With this, the two soon drifted off to sleep.

Mike felt humiliated that afternoon. A girl that he cared very much for and really liked saw a dark secret of his that bothered him to his core. Usually, he would just walk away. But this time, he was going to face it, and tell her what happened.

The two sat on the bed together while she searched for her shoes. "Marion, there's something I should tell you. When I was in high school, there was a girl, Amy that I fell totally head over heels in love with. She was two years behind me, and we were going to get married when she graduated. Then she was raped and committed suicide. It has haunted me since," he confessed to her with tears in his eyes.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry to hear that," his friend replied, rubbing his back in soothing circles.

Mike shrugged his shoulders. "I know I should move on, but it's still a hard thing to shake. These nightmares ruined my marriage, and I don't want them to ruin whatever it is that I have with you." She asked if what she did helped him go back to sleep. He said it did, and thanked her immensely.

"I know this is nothing compared to what you have gone through, but there is something I forgot to tell you that I should have. I have seizures sometimes. I'm on medication for it, but I still have them from time to time," she explained calmly.

"How long has this been going on?" He asked, concerned.

"On and off for the last five years. I started to have a real surge of them over the last two-and-a-half years. One was because I wasn't taking my medication like I should have, and another was attributed to lack of sleep. It sucks."

"Is that why you can't get shipped overseas?" Mike asked.

Marion nodded, "Yeah, which, as I told you before, is kind of disappointing. I really want to go, but no matter how much begging and pleading I do, I get denied."

"Well, that's good in a way. I don't want you to deploy and then lose you, and I'm sure your family feels the same way. I don't know what happens when you have a seizure, but I'm sure it can't be pleasant."

"Yeah, I can be doing something mundane one minute, like sitting at my desk working, and then wake up in an ambulance. After that, I spend the rest of the day sleeping it off."

"What should I do if you have one?"

"Stabilize my head, move anything that I can hit that would hurt me, take off my glasses, and call my neurologist. Her number is on my cell phone, Doctor Landon," Marion pointed out on her phone.

"All right, thanks."

When Mike went to work that day, he felt worse than he usually did. It was a slow night, so he figured he would get caught up on some paperwork that had been nagging him for a while. He felt horrible that what destroyed his marriage came up and would threaten to destroy what looked like a wonderful friendship with a great girl that had the potential to be so much more. Mike took a sip of his coffee as he filled out a report in his office, feeling dejected and still thoroughly humiliated. He had no idea what he was going to do now that she knew about his nightmares and had seen him cry like a child.

Throughout the shift, he appeared distracted. While he was never the most talkative person on the planet, he was more standoffish than he usually was. He sat in his office with the door closed and blasted a Metallica CD. This concerned a lot of his co-workers, but Catherine in particular. She knocked on his office door to see what was going on.

Mike turned and reached behind him to hit the pause button on his boom box and let her in. She walked in, closed the door, and leaned against the doorjamb with her arms crossed.

"I know paperwork isn't the most fun thing to do, but it's nothing to be gloomy and anti-social about," Catherine told her boss, trying to cheer him up.

Mike chuckled slightly and shook his head. "No, it isn't that. I spent the night with Marion. I had a nightmare, and I'm a little afraid that I'm going to chase her away," her supervisor explained.

"If she leaves, then she's a fool. You're a wonderful human being, and no one is perfect. I'm sure she has a few flaws and insecurities of her own that she can't help. "

"She has seizures, has been on and off for the last five years," he explained.

"There you go," Catherine replied, "She can't help that fact that she has seizures, just like you can't help these nightmares. Did she tell you what to do in case she has one?"

"Yeah, and she also figured out what to do if I have a nightmare. She gave me a glass of water, held me, kissed my cheek, told me that it was okay, it was only a dream, and to go back to sleep."

Catherine asked if it worked. He replied yes, that he went right back to sleep afterwards.

She smiled. "Sounds like what you have with her is becoming more. That's good. Lord knows you deserve it after what you've been through. "

"Thanks, Catherine," he replied with a smile.

Catherine's cell phone went off. "I'll let you get back to work. Hodges says he has something for me," she told him as she checked her text messages and excused herself.

Mike smiled, nodded, and turned the CD back on, letting the sound of "Wherever I May Roam" fill the room again. It seemed kind of appropriate, since he's spent his law enforcement career in three different cities, never spending a long stretch at either one of them. He didn't have a reason to stay any place for a particularly long time, and thus never truly had a home.

_I hope that Marion will be able to change that,_ Mike thought.


	4. Chapter 4

Marion was exhausted from a long day at work. She had some homework to do, so she poured herself a cup of coffee and turned on her Gateway laptop. Just as she did, she got an instant message from Mike. Marion smiled.

JerseyBoy1969: Hi.

MaidMarion: Hi yourself.

JerseyBoy1969: What's up?

MaidMarion: Not much. I just got home from work and I'm tired.

MaidMarion: What about you?

JerseyBoy1969: Same here.

JerseyBoy1969: How was work?

MaidMarion: All I have to say is I'm so glad I have tomorrow off.

JerseyBoy1969: That bad?

MaidMarion: Yeah.

MaidMarion: How about you?

JerseyBoy1969: Another day of investigating crime in Sin City.

JerseyBoy1969: The diabetic freak struck again

MaidMarion: Remind me of who he is.

JerseyBoy1969: The one that pees on his victims.

MaidMarion: Yuck

MaidMarion: How do you know he's diabetic?

JerseyBoy1969: My thoughts exactly.

JerseyBoy1969: Because he has high levels of ketones in his urine.

JerseyBoy1969: About the other night…

MaidMarion: Look, don't worry about it.

MaidMarion: Everyone has their own form of baggage. No one is perfect. I think you're great just the way you are.

JerseyBoy1969: Just like you J

MaidMarion: Thanks J

Maid Marion: I hate to cut this short, but I have some homework to do.

JerseyBoy1969: All right, I'll talk to you later.

MaidMarion: Later.

As soon as she was done, she set her status in AIM as invisible, and went straight to the University of Phoenix Web site. She logged in to check to see if anyone responded to her post on a study she read. Her professor did, and elicited a groan at her reply.

"This is going to be a fun week", she muttered to herself as she thought about something to say in response.

After Marion logged off, Mike felt relieved that she didn't say that she wanted to never see him again. At the same time, though, he feared that it would wear on her, and would cause her to walk away. Those nightmares cost him a marriage, and he would be damned if they took this away from him, too.

_Just take a deep breath. Time will tell how this goes,_ Mike told himself. With that, he turned off his laptop and went to bed.


End file.
